Petition - Scrap Guild Cities.

[Aell]

Bear with me. Please. Just read it, don't get emotional until you've read it.

I believe that guild cities fracture the player base, place emphasis on grind over fun and encourage players to join mega guilds rather than have fun their own way. Let me show you how this is true and how to do it better.

The first thing we need to do is accept a need for factional play.

This is not "grind faction, get phat lewtz" as in Khitai. It is playing with and for your faction in PvE and in PvP. Let me tell you a tale of a different Age of Conan and you'll see what I mean.

Bobby buys a boxed copy of Age of Conan and installs it. At character creation after spending three days downloading - no, I won't moan about that now but seriously, people... - he has a choice of not 3 races but 6.

Bobby can create a Cimmerian or a Vanir, an Aquilonian or a Nemedian, a Stygian or a Kushite. Since his background is Scandinavian, Bobby decides Vanir might be fun and he moves on to select his character class.

He can select any character class, although his HoX is a Herald of Ymir and does all the usual HoX stuff ice, changing form to a Ymirish instead of a demon. Nice. And his Tempest if a Priest of Thor. And his Necromancer... is still a necromancer. And his PoM is something appropriate, I don't know. Go with it.

So Bobby does Tortage and then finds himself in Vanaheim. Which is just one zone, like Conarch Village. And then he has quests against CImmerians in all the zones where you currently get Cimmerian quests against the Vanir.

Now, on the PvE server, Bobby earns money and faction rep for fighting Cimmerian NPCs and that rep translates exactly into lower prices for more bag space, more bank space, horses, teleports, recipes, the works. And there's a Vanir channel he can get ready-made help from.

On the PvP server, any Cimmerian player can attack Bobby while any Vanir player can't. In fact, Bobby would gain faction from attacking Cimmerians.

Suppose it works this way all the way up. When you move zones to a non-native zone, you can choose a faction to work for. Signing up with a faction means that you can't buy from its opposition NPCs, can't use the opposition Traders, can't visit the opposition hub city without getting attacked by, er everyone. (But you could raid it, if you had enough people....)

Stuff Bobby puts on the Trader in Vanaheim is only visible in Vanaheim and can only be bought in Vanaheim. Given the way that factional players are barred from opposing faction areas, this means there is a thriving black market.

And let's look at the battlekeeps. There are three in each Border Kingdom. In CE, one belongs to the Cimmerians, one to the Vanir. Within the inner walls of these two, it's a PvE city equivalent to a top-rank Renown city. You can teleport directly directly to the inner section from your home racial Hub.

The third city is contested - it is PvP all the way. Whichever side owns that city gets a bonus to crafting in the form of reduced materials prices. A PvE or non-combatant player can contribute gold to his faction, to buy mercenaries (NPCs) to man the walls and reinforce raids on the contested city.

Why is this better than now?

Bobby is a new player. He doesn't know anyone. However, his Faction channel will gain him something better than names - it'll get him comrades. People to fight with, people to learn from. People with common goals. He may join a guild with them or he may not but whatever he chooses, he is not disbarred from any content because the Faction City has it.

There are no barriers in the way of Bobby subscribing for the long haul, nothing there to make him cannon fodder or meat for opposing players, it is easy-in.

It is deep but casual-friendly.

It is players. It is subscriptions. It is money.

And it totally wipes out any purpose for guild cities. So scrap the damn things and put the resources where they should be. Into Factions.

Players, Game Director, Mods... I put the proposal to the House.

[Scaevacas]

I think the reason this wasn't part of the game at launch was because anyone can kill anyone - which might be more fitting to the Lore of the game. Also it sets the game apart from World of Warcraft which does very close to what you describe.

If Craig Morrison was in charge of the game direction at launch, I believe your suggestion may have been implemented.

I also think if this was implemented at launch, the game would have lost less subscribers because being thrown in the deep end the moment you step into White Sands on a PVP server caused thousands of rage quits.

[Aell]

I think the reason this wasn't part of the game at launch was because anyone can kill anyone - which might be more fitting to the Lore of the game. Also it sets the game apart from World of Warcraft which does very close to what you describe.

If Craig Morrison was in charge of the game direction at launch, I believe your suggestion may have been implemented.

Imagine it like a kind of built-in superguild. On a PvP server, you could still kill anyone NOT in your faction which, for a Cimmerian in Stygia would be pretty easy. And it in no way deprecates guilds because guilds are all about playing with your mates. That's still valuable so there should still be guilds. But they shouldn't be required to enjoy content.

[Kurt2013]

The problem with that system is, that Bobby can not choose his faction. He can not choose to outright play a vanir renege spying for stygia.

But in general the suggestion is interesting, because what is missing now, is the feeling of the "world". Be it through travel times or cultural variations like you said with different localized traders.

I just don't see, how it contradicts guild cities (which are player customizeable content and completely different from what you describe)? Why scrap them in favour of a system that is more like a cultural faction expansion and got not much to do with guild cities at all?

The problem here is that you try to force people ingame into factions, which can hold its own appeal. Nothing speaks against your system for factions in general and i like the faction chat channel, the option for factionbound quests, alliances and wars and limited access, depending on factions. I basically suggested something similar combined with a consequence and renown system.

But see it as a IC and OOC thing...what if Bobby is seeing his guild as an ooc social thing rather than a meeting of vanir?

If there is a way to implement factions as you said, without touching guilds and guild cities, i think it would be better. Many are joined with guilds for the rl people and not for their character settings. I can't see why you can't have both...Bobby coul be in the guild "Bobbys guild" and still in the Vanir faction, might have travelled the world even and joined other factions like the stygian rebels, the Nemedian adventurers or even the Red Hand.

About the killing part: Why not make it so, that there is a renown for each existing faction which defines, how much interaction the char can do with a certain faction. No one needs to be forced to attack or not attack others...you could just move around the variable values here. So, if Bobby chooses the cimmerian race with the starting culture being Vanir, he would have a certain preset renown values. If he keeps acting for the vanir, he would rise and get more options there, while others would become hostile. But nothing would hinder him to slay vanir, do quests for the cimmerians etc., hunt down vanir players he does not like etc.. this would affect his renown though, up to a point where he would not be considered part of the faction anymore. I think such a system would be a LOT more dynamic while also needing a lot less of changes to the actual game and guild structure.

[Aell]

I just don't see, how it contradicts guild cities (which are player customizeable content and completely different from what you describe)? Why scrap them in favour of a system that is more like a cultural faction expansion and got not much to do with guild cities at all?

It's the way guilds (and cities) are currently implemented. See, currently AoC is run along "your guild is your faction" lines, which means that to compete you MUST be in a huge guild. Once you get rid of that limitation (and let's face it, how many guilds are out there recruiting complete newbs? How many reputable guilds, not recruit spammers?) then you have superceded the need for guild cities. Everything they provided is right there in the Faction city.

HOWEVER -

This is not an essential part of the design and therefore I didn't mention it before, but I do think there's a place for a player-guild owned guildhall with associated player housing. Normally this gets shouted down but since I've mentioned it...

We already have the capacity to place objects in the world - straw men. You get a house, it generates revenue in a chest somewhere in the house, somewhere you decide. You can buy and place NPCs to defend your house. Once per 24 hours, one single player can attempt to rob your house and steal the revenue accumulated, like a Villa quest that you designed.

Then I'd show league tables of who designed the best defenses and who is the best thief.

Housing is only fun if it plays to the strengths of the game.

[Kurt2013]

Yep, that is the common point with our suggestions I completely agree there.
I just don't want to loose the small social part (guilds) and player customizeable content (guild cities) we have right now...but again, i don't think the ideas are really contradicting. Such factions can be added parallel to what we have now.

It would be immense fun to get back into open pvp, if the actions of me AND others would actually matter and have a longer lasting effect than one raid or quest. The game already offers a lot of options for such factions...if they are fearful, they could just start testing it on the race server or on the already existing khitai factions.

[Rathothis]

It's the way guilds (and cities) are currently implemented. See, currently AoC is run along "your guild is your faction" lines, which means that to compete you MUST be in a huge guild.

From what you are saying, I take it that by "guild cities", you actually mean "battlekeeps". Because there is no competition for PvE guild cities. Building them is a grindfest for sure, but there's no harm in including some grindy features for people who enjoy that sort of content.

As to your suggestion, some people made suggestions for culture based PvP in this thread:
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=184984

I like your idea to make BKs faction-specific on top of that.

Not sure about the rest of the changes though, like including new races and adapting classes to suit the racial backgrounds. Even if these changes are only cosmetic, they might require some rather significant resource commitment on the part of FC. So while I like the idea, I'd rather have them proceed without those changes than not at all . It doesn't take all that much imagination to play your "Stygian" BS as a Kushite shaman, or your "Cimmerian" HoX as some sort of Hyperborean demon-worshipper.

[Aell]

From what you are saying, I take it that by "guild cities", you actually mean "battlekeeps". Because there is no competition for PvE guild cities. Building them is a grindfest for sure, but there's no harm in including some grindy features for people who enjoy that sort of content.

No, I'm saying that the requirement that your guild has a guild city in order to a) siege b) get cool pets and clothing and stuff c) apparently get bonuses to crit rolls for crafting (and that is the biggest WTF I can imagine since it effectively means that the guildless or small-guild player will never make items comparable to the player in the mega-guild) is stupid. It demands an enormous amount of time and resource spent away from the core activities of the game for bonuses to areas which are not actually relevant to guilds.

AND - people keep telling me about awesome guild cities that are possible now. But nobody has screenshots because they're not important. They are a distraction and an irrelevance which a) does not play to the strengths of the game and b) is actively physically locked away from other players.

If my guild builds the greatest guild city the world has ever seen, what use is it? They'll visit it once per month maybe or just use it as a convenience for travel or (on PvP) a safe place to log out. Nobody else will ever see it at all and the guildmembers (who are actually playing the damn game not swanning around the city) will see a fraction of it once in a blue moon.

An absolute, horrible, depressing waste.

If you could work towards making your Faction city awesome, a whole faction would see what you did. And enjoy what you did. A guild city is like making a beautiful statue and then locking it in a box.

[Rathothis]

No, I'm saying that the requirement that your guild has a guild city in order to a) siege b) get cool pets and clothing and stuff c) apparently get bonuses to crit rolls for crafting (and that is the biggest WTF I can imagine since it effectively means that the guildless or small-guild player will never make items comparable to the player in the mega-guild) is stupid. It demands an enormous amount of time and resource spent away from the core activities of the game for bonuses to areas which are not actually relevant to guilds.

I think we can take these in turn:

* guild cities as requirement for sieges - will be irrelevant if BKs are changed as suggested by you. I don't think this is a major issue now because the BK system locks small guilds out of sieging anyway;

* guild cities and "vanity" stuff - that's absolutely true, and has been raised to FC's attention many times. From what I recall, they even sold a lot of those goodies as "RP content", and then went on to lock small RP guilds out of ever being able to obtain them by tying them to guild renown. However, the main issue here isn't really the guild city, it's the super-grindy renown system.

* guild cities and crafting crits - I wasn't aware of that. If that is really true, this is a silly idea and shouldn't be implemented. If my experience from this and other MMORPGs aren't entirely untrue, crafters often are solo players or, at least, players who like to spend a lot of time doing things on their own.

As to the "waste" argument, no doubt you are right. But then, the systems are in place and this "waste" doesn't really require a lot of resources from FC. Which is what matters atm, first and foremost.

[Aell]

* guild cities and crafting crits - I wasn't aware of that. If that is really true, this is a silly idea and shouldn't be implemented. If my experience from this and other MMORPGs aren't entirely untrue, crafters often are solo players or, at least, players who like to spend a lot of time doing things on their own.

There is a chance of rolling a critical when crafting. Higher your skill, higher your crit chance e.t.c There are a lot of gameplay opportunities created by this as well (e.g. crit chance buff for 15mins after killing a raid boss, improved crit chance in guild city forge locations e.t.c)

From the horse's mouth, no less. :/

There's a whole lot of other crafting stuff which is locked to guild cities. Buying components, gemcutting kits, etc - you can only buy the crappy ones from a resource zone vendor. For the decent ones, you need a T3 guild city and associated buildings.

Thereby, players are locked out of content unless they are prepared to grind forever on something entirely unrelated to what they actually want to do.

Eventually, you add up all the systems that need to be moved out of guild cities and you start to think "nobody goes to them anyway. Nobody can see them. They're literally locked away from other players. Why do they exist? Wouldn't it be better if they didn't exist?"

And the only answer is "yes, it would".